Best Advice: Never Underestimate the Ordinary

In this series, professionals share the words of wisdom that made all the difference in their lives.

"Look for ordinary people to do extraordinary things, rather than extraordinary people to extraordinary things."

I believe it is our duty to pass on advice that has once been passed to us. I believe in improving the lives of others as we build our own success. A large percentage of our knowledge has been passed to us; very little is unique to each one of us. What is unique is how we present the knowledge to others. 

The phrase “Look for ordinary people to do extraordinary things, rather than extraordinary people to extraordinary things” was passed on to me

from a business colleague over 20 years ago, and I have given the advice to other colleagues maybe 50 times. I am not aware if it has ever been applied or properly understood by any of them other than Dawn Strobel. Dawn is my partner and I see she has understood its meaning in how she applies it in life and in business today.

The phrase applies far beyond looking for employees. When an extraordinary person knows they are extraordinary, they search for environments to participate in that they feel challenge their abilities. Any environment they find themselves in that they deem beneath their gifts is a waste of their time. The extraordinary gift they may have is only one part of what they need to accomplish extraordinary things. A path of struggle and a sense that nothing is beneath them is the only way extraordinary people accomplish extraordinary things. Much more common is the ordinary that accomplishes the extraordinary. 

A well-known example of this is the discovery of flight. Around the time of the turn of the 20th century, John Pierpont Langley was an accomplished astronomer, physicist, inventor, and a pioneer in aviation. He was funded by the War Department and the Smithsonian to invent a man-operated flying machine. He was very well connected and he had the greatest minds of the day at his disposal. During that same time, Orval and Wilbur Wright funded their project with their bicycle shop. No one working on the project had a college degree and on December 17th 1903, the Wright brothers took flight.

It has only been in recent years that I have been able to see how viewing yourself as ordinary is a good thing. It is only in the real world that you get to prove what you truly are. No college degree will ever take the place of common sense, experience, and a desire to better the lives of others and one's self. For the record, I have a high school diploma — something I used to be ashamed of but now I realize it was the only path that I could have been taken to achieve what we have.